Have you ever wondered why your grandparents did not have food allergies... or that it was not as common as it is with our children today?

Food allergies are on the rise and make life difficult for those who suffer from this modern epidemic. In addition, this also means further taxing to our medical system and our pockets.

“Every 3 minutes, a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency department – that is more than 200,000 emergency department visits per year.”foodallergy.org

According to a study released in 2013 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, food allergies among children increased approximately 50% between 1997 and 2011.

This is where it all started, with our babies...

Dr. Mercola, points out that allergies to milk are the number one food allergy in the US, and he attributes this to the usage of growth hormones in milk, as well as the overuse of antibiotics in factory farming, which began in the 1990's.

Is There Something “Foreign” In Our Food Today Which Wasn't There Before?

Absolutely! Processed foods in general can contribute to allergies for a number of different reasons. Most processed foods contain a variety of food colorings, flavors, preservatives, and other additives can have a major impact. But there's another, even more insidious hazard lurking in American food stores…

In the mid-1990's, new food proteins were engineered and introduced into our food supply, yet many people are still, to this day, clueless about this. As O'Brien states, it was clearly done to maximize profitability for the food industry, yet NO human trials were ever conducted to see if these genetically engineered proteins were actually safe for animal- and human consumption.

One of the first foods to undergo this change was milk, which incidentally is also the number one food allergen in the US.

In 1994, the dairy industry started using a genetically engineered growth hormone, rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) on cows in order to increase milk production. However, it resulted in higher rates of disease in the treated livestock. To counteract the ill effects, dairies also had to start using more antibiotics, which we now know is one of the driving factors behind the rise in antibiotic-resistant superbugs in humans.

So Why Did Your Grandparents Have No Food Allergies?

They ate food that had no preservatives, and were not processed. Foods came from farms and markets. Babies had a great start to life with breast milk. Those days, you seldom heard of dieting, not like today, as most foods we eat can cause bloating and obesity with all the added chemicals, additives, stabilizers, preservatives, food coloring, flavoring, and GMO's so prevalent in today's foods.

The meats came from animals that were not pumped full of chemicals like today. Eating out was when you visited family and friends, eating good traditional home cooked meals from scratch. Old fashioned Chicken broth was used for most ailments.

Our grandparents didn't have the choice to stay inside, on cell phones, computers and gaming systems. They played outside on the grass, climbed trees, rode bikes and had good healthy fun in mother nature!

They never ran to Doctors either for everything. When they got a fever, they waited it out. When they felt sick, they ate soups, broths and rested a lot. They did not have their doctor or nurse on speed dial, and trusted the body's natural healing process a whole lot more than we do today. Their food was medicine, whether they realized it or not.

Diet and lifestyle have an important impact on our bodies. Every cell of our body needs the correct nutrition to function properly, and poor diet and lifestyle will compromise the integrity of each cell thus creating sensitivities to certain foods.

It appears that food allergies may be an unpredictable byproduct of the many environmental factors listed above, which were largely unfamiliar just a couple of generations ago. At this rate one has to wonder what the future of eating looks like, as more and more toxins are introduced into our die.